Unbelievers in Churches

[The Biblicist]

There has been one called-out people of God from Adam through the end of this present age.

First, the term ekklesia according to its etymological meaning cannot be found in the history of the Greek language where it is was ever used to simply mean "called out of the world." A term is defined by context and by usage and "called out of the world" is a nexistent usage in Greek literature and the Greek Septuigent or the Greek New Testament. So you are simply being imaginative but rather than exegetical.

Furthermore, you are confusing the effectual call (regeneration) with the church.

Old Testament saints may not have had firsthand knowledge of the Christ, but their faith was in Him nonetheless. The elect of God, regardless of when, have been predestined from all eternity. Their salvation was wrought in Christ; even those who died prior to Christ's advent:

Ephesians 1:4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him [emphasis mine].

Did the Father choose only those who would be in the New Testament Church, or did He choose all who He intended to be holy and blameless before Him (in Christ)? It's a rhetorical question, with the answer obviously being the latter proposition.

Now you are confusing election "in Christ" with the church. No place in Scripture does it say the church existed before the world began - nowhere.

Only by confusing regeneration and election with the church can you invent your doctrine.

Again, the founder, the foundation, the first members added to the church HAD NLD TESTAMENT EXISTENCE - NONE - NOTHING - NADA! Paul tells you that the New Testament church is a New Testament truth/revelation not an Old Testament truth/revelation.

Your whole position is a position of inferences based upon confusing terms, confusing doctrines.

The visible church is simply a way of explaining of what the eye can see in regards to the physical construction of the local church.

If that is so, then why does God forbid to have some kind of "brethren" in the congregational body of water baptized believers what your doctrine of the church includes??? Those "brethren" who act immoral or go into false doctrine are to be removed from the Lord's churches (1 Cor. 5:11; 2 Thes. 3:6 "brother") but your kind of invented church necessarily must include them????

This is why those that are truly saved are member of the invisible church; the church that cannot be seen with eyes, but that is known by God.

You are doing the same thing that Augustine and Luther did with the parable of the tares in Matthew 13. Matthew 13 is the text where the universal visible and universal invisible church was hatched. The field is "the world" not the church. The tares and seed are the professing "kingdom" not the church. Prior to 400 A.D. the "universal" church cannot be found in Christian literature. Indeed, the early church fathers called each local congregation "catholic" simply to contrast it with the Jewish synoguoge which was required you to be Jewish. The New Testament congregation was "universal" in the make up of its membership requiring no specific ethnicity.

Prior to the Reformation, you cannot find cannot find any "universal invisible church" in Christian literature. You can find the prospective future church made up of all the elect, but which is an actual future assembly in one place, thus continuing the historic usage of the term ekklesia as a visible localized body of baptized believers, except in this case, its location is in heaven and yet future WITHOUT ANY PRESENT EXISTENCE.

 

[Reformed]

I have made the assertion that God has always had one called out people from all eternity. Under the administration of the New Covenant is common to call God’s people “the Church”. In the Old Testament, both before and after the administration of the Old Covenant, God’s people were referred to by various terms in order to emphasis their special covenant standing before God.

In the Old Testament the Hebrew work qahal is most often used to refer to the gathering of God’s covenant people. In the LXX the Greek work ekklesia is used to translate qahal. As we know ekklesia is the Greek word for the called out assembly, or the Church. The Complete Word Study Dictionary has this to say:

The term ekklēsía denotes the NT community of the redeemed in its twofold aspect. First, all who were called by and to Christ in the fellowship of His salvation, the church worldwide of all times, and only secondarily to an individual church (Matt. 16:18; Acts 2:44, 47; 9:31; 1 Cor. 6:4; 12:28; 14:4, 5, 12; Phil. 3:6; Col. 1:18, 24). Designated as the church of God (1 Cor. 10:32; 11:22; 15:9; Gal. 1:13; 2 Tim. 3:5, 15); the body of Christ (Eph. 1:22; Col. 1:18); the church in Jesus Christ (Eph. 3:21; exclusively the entire church (Eph. 1:22; 3:10, 21; 5:23–25, 27, 29, 32; Heb. 12:23). Secondly, the NT churches, however, are also confined to particular places (Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor. 1:2; 16:19; 2 Cor. 1:1; Col. 4:15; 1 Thess. 2:14; Phile. 1:2); to individual local churches (Acts 8:1; 11:22; Rom. 16:1; 1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:1).

The word ekklēsía is nowhere used of heathen religious assemblies in Scripture. In the OT, two different words are used to denote gatherings of the chosen people or their representatives: edah (5712) meaning congregation and qahal (6951), assembly. In the Sept., sunagōgḗ (4864) is the usual translation of edah while qahal is commonly rendered ekklēsía. Both qahal and ekklēsía by their derivation indicate calling or summoning to a place of meeting, but there is no foundation for the widespread notion that ekklēsía means a people or a number of individual men called out of the world or mankind. Qahal or ekklēsía is the more sacred term denoting the people in relation to Jehovah, especially in public worship.

Zodhiates, S. (2000). The complete word study dictionary: New Testament. Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers.

I am not denying that the New Testament Church is different in administration, and function, than the covenant nation of Israel. What is not different is how individuals were saved. All come through the blood. Old Testament saints placed their faith in Jehovah. Their faith was fulfilled in Christ (or made perfect). Old Testament saints were no less God’s children then the person who turns to faith in Christ today.

The Reformers and Puritans referred to the Old Testament saints are part of the Old Testament Church. They used that phrase not so much to describe a functioning organism as they did the redemptive aspect of the individual’s faith, and the Old Testament saint’s standing before God relative to the New Testament saint’s standing before God. Both are children of God. That is the universal aspect of the universal church.

 

[Iconoclast]

FROM A Baptist Catechism with Commentary...by W.R. Downing;

Quest. 146: What does the word “church” signify?
Ans: The word “church” signifies a gathered assembly.
Acts 11:26. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled
themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the
disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.
Eph. 3:21. Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout
all ages, world without end. Amen.
See also: Matt. 18:15–17; Acts 7:38; Acts 19:32, 37, 39, 41; 1 Cor.
1:2; 11:18–20; Col. 4:15; Phlm. 2.
The Gk. term ekklēsia occurs 114–115 times in the New Testament and is
translated as “church” or “assembly.” In Acts 7:38 it refers to the
congregation of Israel in the desert, and in Acts 19:37, the proper word is
“robbers of temples” [hierosulous] not “churches.” Ekklēsia denotes an
assembly, a congregation of people. It never denotes a building. In the
Septuagint [Greek Old Testament, c. 246 BC], the word is the translation of
the Heb. qahal, which also denotes a congregation or assembly. This concept
of an assembly is reflected in such terms as the Spanish Iglesia and the French
l’Eglise. The English word “church” was derived from a Gk. term [kuriakou
or kuriakon] which denoted a building “of or belonging to the Lord [Kurios],”
used when the first Christian meeting houses existed in the late third century
AD. This later use is recognizable in the Scottish Kirk and the German Kirche.
Thus, there is some confusion about the English term “church,” which has
traditionally and variously signified a congregation, a building, a
denomination, an ecclesiastical system, the aggregate of all true believers in
mystical union with Christ or the whole of Christianity throughout history.
Some hold to the concept of a “universal, invisible church” comprised of
all the elect of all ages, or at the least of all living believers world–wide at any
given time. This concept of the church confuses it with the kingdom of God.
287
Such an entity, of course, has never assembled, is not properly an assembly,
does not possess any of the attributes of a church, and thus cannot truly be
termed a “church” [ekklēsia, or gathered assembly]. It is rather a spiritual and
comprehensive concept of the mystical [spiritual] union of all true believers
with the Lord Jesus Christ, and finds no concrete expression ecclesiastically,
except in a local or gathered assembly (1 Cor. 12:27. The def. article “the”
before the word “body” is to be omitted). The idea of a “universal, invisible
church,” however, is wide–spread in Christian thought, and is axiomatic to
both Reformed and Dispensational thinking. The Sixteenth Century
Reformers, reacting against the Romish idea of a “universal visible church,”
establishing their own state churches with a similar pattern, and understanding
that not all who professed Christ were truly converted, developed the idea of
both a “visible” and an “invisible” church. The former was composed of
believers and unbelievers; the latter of only the true believers. Some hold that
this theory derived from Gnostic, Neoplatonic philosophy which saw the
visible world as the imperfect reflection of the perfect invisible world, i.e., the
world of the Platonic “ideas.”
But what of those passages where “the church” is referred to in an abstract
sense (e.g., 1 Cor. 10:32; Eph. 3:10–21; Col. 1:18)? Does this not refer to the
aggregate of all true believers who are in union with Christ as his “mystical
body”? “The One True Church”? We prefer another interpretation, which is
consonant with all the uses of the term “church” in the New Testament: first,
the local or concrete use of “church,” referring to any given assembly of
scripturally baptized believers. Second, the abstract, generic or institutional
use of the term. A common illustration is that of “the jury,” referring not to
any particular jury, but to the institution of this legal entity in the judicial
system. When such usage finds concrete expression, it is a local, visible jury.
This same principle would hold true for those statements which are often used
to refer to the “universal, invisible church.” We prefer to classify these as the
“institutional” use of the word “church,” which finds concrete expression in
the local assembly. Third, the eschatological use of the term “church,”
referring to “the general assembly [panēguris, the festal gathering of a whole
group, nation or country] and church [ekklēsia] of the firstborn” which is in
the process of being assembled in heaven. When all the elect are gathered
together from all ages, they will comprise the church [panēguris] in glory,
fully assembled for the first time (Eph. 5:27; Heb. 12:22–23; Rev. 21:2). This
three–fold usage coherently answers to every use of the term “church” in the
New Testament without violating either grammar or doctrine—or the
meaning and biblical usage of the Old Testament qahal and the New
Testament ekklēsia.

 

[Reformed]

OK. I am done participating in this thread.

 

[Yeshua1]

FROM A Baptist Catechism with Commentary...by W.R. Downing;

So you are saying that the Church was in exist before the messiah of it actually had come to die on the earth?

 

[Yeshua1]

OK. I am done participating in this thread.

Why> Seemed to be having some good discussions on this thread!

 

[MB]

Personally I can't think of a better place than church for non believers. However if the believers are so weak they don't know or don't care what happens to them. Then there is something wrong with the believers in that church.
MB

 

[blackbird]

So, I guess, then, Paul was a Calvinist:




So, if Paul commands a church member to examine themselves to see if their faith is genuine it's OK, but for a pastor to do so today is "wrong."

Get real and give the rest of us a break...

The Archangel

Here's how I sometimes word the need for salvation

I ask the hearers before me to do this

Ask the Holy Spirit----Holy Spirit, am I saved? Have I been born again??

Do you think that if you ask the Holy Spirit that question---that He will lie to you? That He will tell you you're saved when you're really not??

What does the Bible say??

The Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God! Ask the Holy Spirit today if you are saved!! He'll tell you the truth!!

 

[DHK]

Catechisms are not infallible:

Ekklēsia denotes an
assembly, a congregation of people. It never denotes a building. In the
Septuagint [Greek Old Testament, c. 246 BC], the word is the translation of
the Heb. qahal, which also denotes a congregation or assembly. This concept
of an assembly is reflected in such terms as the Spanish Iglesia and the French
l’Eglise. The English word “church” was derived from a Gk. term [kuriakou
or kuriakon] which denoted a building “of or belonging to the Lord [Kurios],”

Both the Spanish word "Iglesia" and the French word L'elglise" are similar to our English word "church" and can refer either to building or assembly. Thus the statement is false.

Also note that the author's constant use of the LXX is irrelevant, as is many of the posters' here. The LXX is simply a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in to the Greek language, and it wasn't a very good translation at that. Translation to translation the KJV is a much better translation of the Scripture than the LXX with all of its weaknesses and errors. It wasn't that good of a translation. It is not the inspired Word of God. It is only a translation. Keep that in mind when discussing meanings.